A Life in a Box

A box was delivered to me when I visited with my family in Texas. A simple cardboard box, overflowing with dingy paper and old photographs, some yearbooks and postcards and a faded silk scarf. It is a bit difficult to think that the contents of the box was the summation of a life, all there really was to show. The box contained the worldly positions of my uncle Carl.

Carl was one of those men that went to war in 1943 and never returned. The box was what he left with is mother and dad when he left for the South Pacific or perhaps some of the items were sent to them by others after he left. At any rate the box was mostly unopened for the past 65 years. It fell upon me to determine what to do with these small remaining items of his life.

Carl was the oldest of 2 sons and 6 daughters. He was the one who went to college in the midst of the Depression. He worked his way through. The first member of his family to graduate. He became a teacher and later worked to the Texas Highway Patrol, but in far West Texas. Then came the time to serve. He was going to be drafted or maybe he was. At any rate, he became a radio operator on an Army Air Corps plane that did not return from a mission out of New Guinea over the Sea of Bismarck. The plane never returned and was never found.

His box remained with his parents until their death and was passed to his only brother who also served in the Army Air Corps in New Guinea. When is brother died the box made it to his sister, my mother, and then to me.

Why me? I was born a few months after Carl went missing in the South Pacific. My mother gave me the middle name of Carl. So, Carl lives on beyond the box.